Comment...

ElliottCurrie

Repressive Violence Only a few years ago, political violence was thought of as one o f several things Americans did not have to worry about. Violence was something that went on in Peru or Indonesia or Hungary. Political violence, like ideology and class conflict, was something that we fortunate citizens of the Western i n d u s t r i a l societies had effectively banished on entering the realm of the post-industrial. This was, of course, a myth, as countless writers have by now hastened to point out. How it could have been sustained at all, even before the sixties, is something of a puzzle. It was patently false even as a description of the forties and fifties, and worse as a predictor of the future. At any rate, the myth did not survive the sixties. Urban uprisings, campus rebellions and (not least) a savage war saw to that. The m y t h has not entirely died, of course; few myths really do. But it can be argued that the myth of a peaceful America has been supplanted by the myth of a violent America. What worries me about this, however, is that the new myth of violence may obscure some deeper issues and s o m e more fundamental questions about American society and American politics. Like the old myth, the new badly falsifies what it purports to explain and helps to mystify the world and confuse efforts to change it. Moreover, the new myth bears important resemblances to the old one and even shares some of its assumptions. First, the new myth is indiscriminate. We are now frequently told that we are a violent people. Aside from the general vagueness of that kind of phrase (what exactly does a violent people do? Does it engage in ritual murder? Genocide? H o l y war? Rumbles? All of the above?), another question arises. Who are the people 12

who are violent? Again, though, who among our people are bloody-minded? Am I? I don't really think so. And I don't know many people who are, at least not very well, though I do know some. Thus the first, and most serious, analytical failure of the new myth: it fails to specify the social location of violence. Indeed, by implying that we are all violent, the new myth exonerates as it condemns; nobody is particularly at fault, no discernible groups of people are most heavily involved in the production of violence. Correlatively, no discernible groups are most heavily i n v o l v e d in t h e consumption of violence, a point to which 1 will return. Second, the new myth is further indiscriminate in that it tends to lump together all kinds of violent behavior (and often behavior that is violent only by a wild stretch of definition) and to link them all, at least implicitly, to the same source or set of sources. Violence becomes a catchword for a variety of things that have no discernible connection with one another. Ghetto domestic quarrels, the murder rate, counterinsurgency actions and riots of all kinds are often dealt with under the same rubric. This would be a legitimate endeavor if it were based on an analytical perspective sufficiently broad to link all of these things. But such a perspective, if there is one, has not been offered. We are offered only a t e r m - v i o l e n c e - a n d a set of widely varying phenomena that the term might reasonably fit. The most obvious result of all this is, again, vagueness and a lack of conceptual clarity. A somewhat less obvious result is the depoliticization of the subject. If the violence in which we are interested includes both violent domestic quarrels and armed insurrections, then we are most likely to

reduce the two to a common denominator, thus obscuring what is most significant-and most p o l i t i c a l - a b o u t the latter. Third, oddly enough, the new myth that we are a violent people tends to be projected within a slightly modified version of the more simplistic pluralist model of American politics. The new myth, that is, still regards American society as an arena in which a plurality of groups juggle about for a measure of power and influence and usually attain it. The only difference is that it is now acknowledged that this often involves violent kinds of political bargaining and maneuvering. While the old myth argued, for instance, that successive immigrant groups had been p e a c e f u l l y i n c o r p o r a t e d into the American polity (where the polity was seen as fundamentally accommodative and unproblematic), the new myth a r g u e s t h a t successive immigrant g r o u p s h a v e b e e n v i o l e n t l y incorporated into a polity still considered to be basically accommodative and unproblematic. And they do this, runs the new myth, because other channels of entry have closed (or have failed to o p e n ) . The imagery suggests that American society is one in which, given the development of sufficient channels, the grievances of just about everybody may be (or could be) satisfactorily arbitrated. This is, of course, not a new idea; that is just the point. It is an old idea held over amidst all the talk about our violent heritage: the idea that " o u r " society is one that can a c c o m m o d a t e its conflicts without radical or fundamental alteration; a society, that is, without contradictions. The new myth does not a t t e m p t to demonstrate this critical point; it is content, like the old myth, to assume it. This raises a fourth issue, a fourth TRANS-ACTION

element of the new myth. To say that " w e " are a violent society implies not only, as I have suggested, that everyone is somehow equally violent or prone to violence, but also that "we" refers to an identifiable and comprehensive group. The new myth, that is, perpetuates a second feature of the old myth ; it invokes an image of consensus whose basis is unexamined. In both myths it is confidently assumed that underlying our contemporary (and historical) tensions there is a community that has failed to come together. Insofar as this is simply tautological, it is definitionally true. But as it is used in the myth, it implies something further that is not t a u t o l o g i c a l that there exists the possibility of such a community within existing patterns of power and the distribution of social rewards. In this sense, the new myth answers a priori what is possibly the most important question: is there a unifiable society, a "we", here at all, and could there be, given the essential n a t u r e of American political and economic arrangements? This perspective has much to do with the way policy matters are typically phrased in the new myth. The response to violence is usually couched in terms of what we must do. "We must have the perception," writes the Violence Commission, "to recognize injustices when they are called to our attention, and we must have the institutional flexibility to correct those injustices promptly." Again, who are "we?" The Commission? The government? All Americans? All responsible citizens? Glossing over this problem obscures the fact that traditionally not everyone is in a position to make these large policy decisions, especially as regards such things as the response to injustices. Invoking the spurious " w e " ignores the existence of social cleavages that have their roots in the way our society is structured. Consider another statement by the Violence Commission having to do with the police: "Our society," they write, "has commissioned its police to patrol the streets, prevent crime, and arrest susp e c t e d c r i m i n a l s . " An innocuous enough remark, except that it ignores the patent fact that the police are and have been a subject of great dispute and that, historically, only some of us have been in a position to commission FEBRUARY 1971

the police to do anything. Others of us have tended disproportionately to be the objects of the policing that some of us have commissioned.

The Concept of Repression One way of demythologizing the question of American violence is to break it up into more precise phenomena that can be better located, better conceptualized and more concretely related to the actual structures of society. This means at the very least that we need to separate violence from below, the violence of those who challenge or disrupt existing patterns of power and reward, from violence from above, the violence of those attempting to maintain or extend those patterns. This in turn means that we must take seriously the concept of repression. The concept of repression can provide a starting point for a very different perspective on the character and meaning of political violence in the United States. It has not generally been taken very seriously by American social scientists, particularly when applied to the United States. This is, of course, a function of the peacefulAmerica myth and, more generally, of the unreflective Americanization of social theory, our tendency to assume that the United States is so exceptional that concepts like repression or its companion, oppression, do not, or do no longer, apply here. This belief, however, damages the credibility of American social science and should have been abandoned long ago. My dictionary provides two useful meanings of the term repression: to put down by force, subdue and, more interestingly, to prevent the natural or normal expression, activity or development of something. This concept, then, applies specifically to violence from above (and other forms of coercive force) used to put down or subdue activity from below. Moreover, as the second definition suggests, we may conceive of repression as an attempt to subdue or prevent behavior that is in some sense natural, that would flow normally from existing conditions were it not for the application of repressive measures. This is, of course, the way the term is used in psychoanalytical theory. It also makes a great deal of sense when ap-

plied to problems of social structure. There are several important implications of this use of the term. First, it normalizes, or makes comprehensible, the behavior of those who are being repressed. Traditionally, in the Western industrial societies, these p e o p l e a r e disproportionately the lower classes-the rabble, the dangerous classes, or what have you, though the ranks of the repressed have from time to time widened to include o t h e r s . Also traditionally, Western social science has described their behavior as extraordinary and problematic. The stirrings of the powerless, however else they may be conceived, are quite generally seen as requiring explanation in the form of special theories of unusual collective action. The concept of repression implies a different conceptual focus. It suggests that under some conditions, collective action on the part of the oppressed makes sufficient sense, is so natural, that elaborate special explanations are not in o r d e r - w h i c h is not to suggest that it will predictably occur in predetermined ways or that its outcome w i l l p r e d i c t a b l y occur in predetermined ways or that its outcome is unproblematic. It is to suggest that special explanatory devices, especially those having to do with the supposed pathological character of the participants in such action, may be fundamentally misleading. What may require special explanation is the absence, under certain conditions, of collective action, or its deflection into unusual paths. Thus the concept of repression, by suggesting the naturalness of this kind of action, implies that the behavior of those who attempt to subdue or prevent it must be seen as an effort at intervention into a natural process. This in turn implies that, insofar as some kinds of societies depend on repressive action to keep going at all, there is something about their arrangement that we may reasonably think of as unnatural and as requiring artificial bolstering on a routine basis. To the extent that this is so, our attention is directed at the problematic nature of the existing order, to the sources of the need for routine repression. In this sense, the existence of repression tends to imply the existence of contradictions within the society and to alert us to the need for determining their loca13

tion and their source. This does not mean that any time we observe some kind of action by policemen it is necessarily a manifestation of repression and hence an indicator of the most basic contradictions in the society. It does mean that we ought to be alert to the directedness and systematic character of violence from above. When police or the military are involved in violent action, it is likely to be patterned and to follow the lines of important social cleavages. It is unlikely to be satisfactorily explained without reference to those cleavages, especially if an attempt is made to reduce that behavior to the personal problems or momentary tensions of the people involved. Which again is not to say that these have nothing to do with it, but that, for example, the behavior of a brutal policeman or prison guard must be seen in the context of the system of relations that either encourages him to, or discourages him from, translating his personal hang-ups into normal organizational policy. Likewise, to take seriously the concept of repression means that notions like police overreaction are likely to be inadequate in that they miss entirely the systematic and contextual aspects of police violence at any given point in history. Police overreact in some situations predictably, and in others rarely or not at all. In America, police rarely overreact against rowdy and drunken businessmen or members of fraternal organizations, but frequently against ghetto blacks or long-haired youths. And, as is well known, police have hist o r i c a l l y tended to underreact in certain situations-in the early race riots, for example, in failing to control the violence of white rioters, or, as in some more recent demonstrations, failing to control the behavior of violent counterdemonstrators. Repressive violence, then, is best seen as a form of social control, and one that, like other forms of social control, is related to the most basic structural antagonisms. Moreover, its social location and its typical expression are likely to take historically specific forms. Since repression is one of the means of control available to the currently powerful, it will tend to take on, in practice, features drawn from the culture and traditions of the

powerful. It will also take on specific targets. Historically, repressive violence tends to be destructive of persons more than property, but this is generally limited to domestic repression, and reflects the historical connection between property and power or, perhaps more accurately, between propertylessness and powerlessness. The concept of repression directs attention to all of the ways in which societies are maintained or imposed instead of permitting us to take for g r a n t e d a condition of stasis, of normal social functioning. It alerts us to the active measures through which given a r r a n g e m e n t s are forcibly created, extended or secured against the possibility (or probability) of change. The concept of repression implies, in most societies we can think of, that normal institutional functioning probably means that many people are being killed or injured as a matter of routine. Needless to say, this should make us very wary of theories that purport to locate social violence in the subcultural propensities of oppressed groups. The concept of repression implies that violence permeates the status quo and directs investigation to the agencies through which it is prod u c e d and the ideologies through which it is justified. Finally, therefore, the idea of repression implies a methodology in which the importance of looking at these agencies and ideologies is stressed. This means an emphasis on looking at the police, the military and the so-called correctional system with special attention to their role in the maintenance of the going order through coercive and violent means of control. Structured Ignorance It turns out that we know surprisingly little about any of these things. I had occasion recently to look for materials on the history and current functioning of the police in America. This turned out to be very frustrating. Few materials exist at all on the history of the police, and much of what there is, is scandalously inadequate. The relevant question is, why should this be so? And as a number of writers have pointed out, the interest of social scientists in the police was virtually

nonexistent until quite recently. Such work as existed was generally done under the general rubric of public adm i n i s t r a t i o n and was concerned mainly with making police more efficient and less traditionally corrupt. Much of the more recent social-science work on the police remains bound by these interests. Again, why is this? Or consider the state of research on the military. I also had occasion recently to try to assemble some readings on the role of the military in American life. This too proved to be frustrating. There is more work by social scientists on the military than on the police, but it often fails to consider, a n d occasionally expressly i g n o r e s , many relevant issues-the meaning of militarization in a democratic society, the effect of militarism on other social institutions, the attitudes and social processes underlying the extension of American military involvement overseas, the relation between military and economic aims and interests and so on. Much of what has been done so far, particularly in sociology, tends to take the military for granted and to work within the military's own definitions of the world and of its place therein. Why is this? Think of the reams of material sociologists have produced, and continue to produce, on the problem of delinquent gangs. There is here an astonishing imbalance between the degree of social harm and the interest of social scientists in these two subjects. The same applies to our awareness of the legal and political framework surrounding violence from above. How many people have any idea of the rules guiding the use of physical violence by police? Or of the legal remedies against such violence? Or its extent? In this there is a clue to the source of the collective ignorance of social scientists about these matters. People who write social scientific works are not the traditional consumers of violence in American society. Nor, for that matter, are most articulate commentators. Ordinarily, the people who study violence do not experience it, and the people who experience it do n o t write about it. Consequently, writing about violence rarely involves, or comprehends, the perspective of the consumers of violence. Ordinarily, that perspective remains hidden except at Continued on page 62

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Comment... times of serious rips in the fabric of anonymity that generally shrouds official violence. There are many examples of this. During the People's Park disturbance in Berkeley, police made a mass arrest of some 500 people-demonstrators, shoppers, curious bystanders, and, as it turned out, one reporter for the San Francisco Cbronicle. Those arrested were taken to the county prison farm at Santa Rita. There many of them were insulted, harassed, verbally and physically abused, humiliated, and some beaten, by the guards. Shortly thereafter, a report was published on the incident by the reporter who had been caught up in the mass arrest, and considerable indignation followed, culminating in the indictment of some of the guards by a federal grand jury on charges of violating the civil rights of the prisoners. Now this incident was most unpleasant and frightening in its quasitotalitarian overtones, and the outcry over it was genuine. Yet there was a certain belatedness about the outcry. For, as many people connected with the legal system in the area were quick to point out, harassment and beating of prisoners was routinely used at the Santa Rita jail. Up to now, however, the victims had been overwhelmingly lower-class blacks, Chicanos and poor whites. People, in short, without (traditionally) access to the mass media, without political influence, without m i d d l e - c l a s s a r t i c u l a t e n e s s and middle-class belief in the efficacy of complaint-the people who are normally the occupants of jails, prisons, detention homes and other such places, u s u a l l y hidden from public view, where American society does its dirtiest and most oppressive work. It is in such places that we may begin to gain a clearer notion of what it may mear~ to be a violent people. There are a number of other things that are usually ignored because they are traditionally the concerns only of the powerless. The FBI publishes sta o

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tistics on the number of policemen killed in the line of duty but not on how many people are killed by policemen. What evidence we have indicates that most of these people are ghetto blacks. How and why, exactly, were they killed? tn the great majority of cases, you'll just have to ask the police. And in the absence of other sources of information, you'll just have to take their word for it. This points to a second source of structured ignorance about these questions. Not only is repressive violence normally inflicted primarily on the powerless and those who have been officially defined as incompetent or vicious, but the agencies through which such violence is normally dispensed are very difficult of access. Not only are we more likely to hear (or read) the official story about how these agencies work, but we are not likely to be able to get close enough to their inner workings to provide alternate sources of evidence and understanding. It has been done, of course, but not very often. Places like police d e p a r t m e n t s and military bureaucracies are not normally thrown open to public or scholarly scrutiny, especially on a 24-hour basis. And with the stirrings of public criticism of these agencies, they may close more tightly.

Some Questions This closing off is something to be concerned about (and, perhaps, agitated against) because there is much that needs to be investigated. Let me suggest some major areas in which meaningful research might be done in the sociology of repression. First, there is a need for comparative and historical analysis. What are the social origins of our agencies of, and attitudes toward, repression? How do they differ from the comparable agencies in other times and in other places? What are the social and cultural sources of repressive attitudes, of what Erik Erikson has called the polic-

ing mind? And correlatively, what are the social conditions limiting or mitigating repressive means of control? With enough of this sort of information, we could ask: to what extent do certain kinds of social systems require repression in order to continue going at all? Why? To what extent is repression an inevitable part of organized social life, or is it at all? Can we conceive of societies without it, and what would they look like? Another concern is the legal and political structure surrounding the apparatus of repression. What is the structure of contemporary agencies of repression? How are they connected with one a n o t h e r - o n paper and in practice? How are people selected and trained for participation in repressive control? What are the present sources of restraint on official violence? How have they evolved, and from what premises? How effective are they? This leads to questions about mechanisms of change aimed at the reduction of repression in social life. What is the public response to repression? How are people brought to accept or reject repressive modes of control over their fellows? What are the social bases of attempts, successful and otherwise, to alter or abolish repressive controls? What are the relative weights of various means-legal change, the establishm e n t o f c o m p l a i n t procedures, changes in the control or the personnel of agencies of repression, political struggle? 1 hasten to add that I am not sugg.esting that no useful work has been done in these areas. ! am suggesting that we ought to begin taking seriously the idea of repression and begin working seriously with it, recognizing that it is a fitting and important-indeed imperative-subject for social analysis, at least as much so as the behavior of wayward girls or the family patterns of the poor. Like democracy, dictatorship or revolution, repression is a big subject. It is one that American social science can no longer ignore.

Elliott Currie is at the Center for the Study of Law and Society at the University of California, Berkeley.

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